In this lesson you'll learn about the traffic you need in order to get started with affiliate marketing.
There is no set number of page views you need to start promoting affiliate products and services on your website. You can start any time, no matter how new your blog is or how many readers you have.
You do not need millions of page views each month to make money through affiliate marketing.
Every blog is different, but once you understand what your readers want (which will be discussed later in this course), you can make affiliate income in many cases, regardless of how many page views you receive.
More page views doesn't always mean that you'll make more money. Instead, you want followers that align with the message you are presenting, as those are the people you are likely to convert into buyers or leads.
Having 1,000 loyal readers is better than 10,000 who don't care.
This means that 1,000 loyal and interested monthly readers is much better than 10,000 readers that don't care about what you have to say. This is because affiliate marketing has a lot to do with how much your readers trust you and whether they are interested in what you are writing about.
I know people who receive 1,000,000 page views a month and earn $0 a month through affiliate marketing. On the other hand, I know others receiving 50,000 page views a month that make a few thousand dollars every month.
As you can tell from above, affiliate marketing can be started anytime, as it's not all about page views. If you have a loyal set of readers, you may be able to promote affiliate products quite well.
I don't have anywhere near as many page views as some of the most popular bloggers out there, but when you compare their income reports to mine, I am making much more through affiliate marketing.
With that being said, to make money through affiliate marketing, it wouldn't hurt to improve your page views. You still do want to find ways to increase your follower and subscription numbers. The more loyal and engaged followers you have, the more likely you'll have a conversion.
But, remember what I said, you want these to be true followers who will be interested in what you are promoting.
There are many different ways to increase the number of page views so you can make money through affiliate marketing. For information on increasing your page views, please refer to the worksheet in the Bonus section titled "How To Increase Your Page Views."
When You Should Apply For Affiliate Programs.
For the most part, there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to when you should apply for affiliate programs.
However, for a very small amount of affiliate programs you need to have some sort of following, whether that be through page views received on a blog or the number of followers on social media accounts, before you are approved and allowed to promote affiliate links.
Some affiliate programs may require that you have a specific amount of conversions each month, and if that is the case, then you do not want to apply for that affiliate program until you are certain that you are able to fulfill their requirements. If you are interested in applying for an affiliate program with strict rules, I recommend making sure that your readers are interested in the products associated with that affiliate program and analyzing whether or not you can meet their requirements. This is because you may get kicked out of the affiliate program if you don't meet their conversion requirements, making it much more difficult to rejoin later when you do have enough traffic to generate conversions. In this case, it's better to wait, rather than be kicked out and never again have the program as an option.
For the affiliate programs that require you to have a certain level of traffic, I recommend waiting until you reach that level and know that you will be able to send them the amount of conversions they want. You should never lie about your traffic level, as that will hurt your relationship with the affiliate program and may possibly cause you to be kicked out. Instead of rushing this process, focus on improving your numbers, writing great content, and building trust with your audience. Trust me, it will all be worth it.
Now, most affiliate programs are not strict with their rules. For many affiliate programs, you can join no matter how new your blog is or even if you receive a low amount of page views.
If the affiliate program doesn't have rules about how often you need to have a conversion, then you can apply right away. Once you are approved, you can put affiliate links on your site no matter what your traffic is. For these types of affiliate programs I recommend doing this from the beginning, because it doesn't hurt to add affiliate programs like these. However, please finish the rest of this course before you do that, as there are some very important aspects of affiliate marketing that you will want to keep in mind before just slapping affiliate links on your website.